Dwarves in Space

Kategorie: Abbyverse

Dwarves in Space

Physical Traits & Society

Dwarves are 1.4 m to 1.6 m tall and have a heavy build, with thicker and stronger bones and muscles compared to humans. Both males and females can grow beards, and while many do, shaven dwarves are not uncommon. They are known for their dexterous hands, and their society values high-quality craftsmanship, honor, and the importance of keeping one's word above all else.

Due to their shorter and denser physique, dwarves are slower runners over long distances, though they can sprint just fine. They also lack jumping power and have a shorter reach than humans.

Exodus from Muiria

The dwarves abandoned Muiria, their homeworld, as it became increasingly inhospitable. The planet was already rocky and resource-rich but had less arable land than other habitable worlds. Overpopulation, industrial expansion, and conflicts accelerated climate change, leading to worsening conditions.

With advanced technology, the dwarves turned to space. They moved their industries to orbit, then further out into the asteroid belts. It was during this time that the clan system was established, as the dwarves realized that space offered room for everyone and that the conflicts that had wrecked Muiria's habitability must not be repeated.

Clans & Governance

Dwarves have always organized around large family units, but the transition to space strengthened these bonds even further. Clans now operate spaceships—the richer and more powerful the clan, the larger and more advanced the ship. These vessels serve as homes, mining bases, and industrial centers for smaller scout and production ships.

All clans send representatives to the Clan Assembly, a governing body located on a station orbiting their now mostly empty homeworld. Here, they debate issues affecting all dwarves and present a unified diplomatic front in dealings with other nations, empires, and political entities. The Assembly itself is governed by the Council of Clans, which acts as the de facto dwarven government and the main arbiter for disputes between clans that cannot be resolved through normal legal means.

The Council of Clans is also responsible for tracking each clan’s contributions to the dwarven military and would act as the central authority in times of total war. Positions on the Council are awarded through elections within the Assembly.

Dwarven Values & Trade Culture

Dwarves respect tradition and are slow to adopt new technologies until they fully understand them and see clear benefits. However, they are also industrious and pragmatic, actively seeking out and reverse-engineering technologies they find interesting. True adoption, however, only comes once they fully understand every aspect of how a technology works.

Contracts hold immense significance in dwarven culture. The written word is sacred, and dwarves strive to cover every possible contingency in their agreements. Their contracts are notoriously complex, and dwarven lawyers are infamous for their ability to draft and interpret these dense legal texts. Dwarves do not break contracts unless they have an exceptionally good reason, which is exceedingly rare. Likewise, they expect the same level of commitment from others—breaking a contract with one dwarven clan results in being blacklisted by all others, marking the offender as untrustworthy and unreliable.

Because most dwarven clans specialize in large-scale resource extraction and industrial development, losing access to their services can be a crippling blow to any empire’s economic and manufacturing capabilities.

Industry, Conflict, and Warfare

Dwarves primarily focus on trade, commerce, and the creation of goods and technologies. They shun conflict whenever possible, but if war becomes necessary, they prefer direct, overwhelming force rather than deception or subterfuge. Their ships are large, heavily armored, and equipped with massive firepower, favoring brute strength over agility.

Despite their preference for honorable dealings, dwarven clans often employ auxiliaries from other species to assist in various roles—from factory workers to specialist operators. While they consider espionage and underhanded tactics dishonorable, the larger clans quietly employ operatives to handle the tasks they cannot officially be involved in. Over time, these alien auxiliaries often integrate into dwarven clans, and while rare, it is not unheard of for non-dwarves to become part of the core clan family itself.

However, not all dwarves follow the path of honor. Rogue clans, either exiled or self-imposed exiles, have turned to piracy or mercenary work, dealing with factions that mainstream dwarven society would refuse to associate with. Yet, even these outlaws sometimes serve their kin, providing deniable assets when needed.

Dwarven FTL Travel & Trade Network: The Deep-Vault Drive and Industrial Armada

Dwarves, being an industry-focused and pragmatic species, have tailored FTL travel to their specific needs. While they use the same Jump Capacitor System as other species, they have adapted it to suit their massive-scale mining, refining, and industrial operations.

Dwarven FTL: The Deep-Vault Drive

  • Jump System: Dwarves utilize the same solar sail-charged capacitor jumps as other species, with travel between Lagrange Points and instant jumps between systems.
  • Overcharged Capacitors: Unlike standard jump vessels, dwarven Deep-Vault Drives store excess energy, allowing three to five consecutive jumps before requiring a recharge. This makes dwarven jump ships the most efficient in the galaxy, capable of traversing multiple systems in a single trade circuit.
  • Powerful But Slow Recharge: Their jump ships possess massive energy reserves, but the recharge time is extensive—usually taking three weeks or more, requiring dedicated charging stations at key industrial hubs.

Dwarven Industrial & Trade Armada

Dwarves have built a vast network of industrial freighters, mobile shipyards, and mining fleets. Their colossal freighters, known as "Forge Ships," are legendary across the galaxy.

Types of Dwarven Spacecraft

  • Forge Ships (Massive Super Freighters) – The backbone of dwarven industry, these colossal factory ships refine raw materials in transit, producing alloys, components, and prefabricated goods. They can dismantle entire asteroid belts and process them for delivery to client worlds.
  • Mining Hulks (Mobile Refinery Stations) – These massive mining platforms extract and refine rare metals, often operating independently for decades. Some of these long-haul ships are known as "Nomad Clans".
  • Anvil-Class Jump Ships (Deep-Vault Drive Equipped) – Heavily armored freighters built for long-haul, multi-jump trade routes. These ships are fortified with gun platforms and escort drones to deter raiders.
  • Ironclad War Barges (Dwarven Military Fleets) – Slow but incredibly durable warships, equipped with hulking railguns, plasma lances, and kinetic artillery. These ships double as mobile command centers for ground invasions.

Dwarven Trade & Economic Influence

Dwarves control vast industrial supply chains, making them indispensable to the rest of the galaxy. Their contracts are sacred—breaking a deal with a dwarven clan means being cut off from their trade empire.

Dwarves and Warfare

While dwarves prefer trade over war, their jump points are heavily fortified. Their Jump Gates are protected by gigantic orbital defense stations, armed with railguns and missile batteries. If threatened, dwarves can lock down entire supply chains, crippling an enemy’s industrial capacity.

Mia

Kategorie: Abbyverse

Name: Mia Ilo
Species: Tiefling / Human female
Age: 23
Heigh: 1,65m

Appearence: She is in very good physical shape and used to be on the move and work a lot. Her skin can be described as tanned but also has a slightly ashen or gray touch to it. She has black hair, that she keeps short and usually bound into a ponytail to keep it out of her eyes. She has short, back-swept horns, long pointed ears and a very flexible prehensile tail. She also has pointed fangs and generally sharp teeth.

Personality: Generally Mia is alert and curious. Her upbringing in an orphanage and the mistrust she often faced as a tiefling made her appear introverted and weary of others. But her desire to belong somewhere and to have a place where she would feel safe and valued makes her seek out exactly the sort of situations she would feel a bit uncomfortable to be in. What in turn can lead for her to be easily irritated. Especially by people who act strangely and seem to be focused their attention on her. Her heavily goth leaning outfits can be easily seen as a way to keep a distance from other people.
Even when she wants to have a good life and to respect the laws and just live her life, she has a strong sense for social injustice and dislike for corporations. This can make her sympathetic towards anti-corporate movements and ideas. She is also mistrustful of religions and similar believe systems.
Education: She has good general education and has picked up many skills around engineering, mechanics and computers. She is naturally gifted in controlling machines, driving and piloting. As she is observant and reads a lot, she has picked up many other bits of knowledge over time.

Notable skills: Mia is an expert pilot and driver and very skilled with machines and computers.

Backstory: Mia was born somewhere in the Industrial Hive – Mining District 4 Area 952 Level 524 on the planet Tiphars 4 in the Tiphars system. The whole system is heavily developed with mining and industrial hives and stations and is run by an alliance of dwarven clans who colonized the system and set up their operations there. It is mostly specialised in extraction of raw materials and heavy industry and has drawn in billions of workers and countless businesses from all over the inhabited space.
Where Mia was born exactly or who her parents are is unknown. She was left in a orphanage at an early age and there are no records about who her parents have been. The only fact that Mia knows is, that her mother was human. And probably someone from the upper levels of the hive who left her in the orphanage out of shame of having a tiefling daughter.
The truth however is, that her father was a being from the plane called The Iron Perdition. He fled the place and stole a soul from the Tyrants ruling the place. The Iron Perdition is a world of gears, chains, and eternal enslavement, where souls are forged into tools, weapons, and machines. Where identity is stripped away and everyone are turned into obedient constructs. And the Tyrants do not want to let any of their subjects, and even less, their creations escape. The deeds of Mias Father enraged the Tyrants, but he managed to evade them as he fled into the material plane. There, he seduced Mias mother in order to bring the soul to the world and have her be born, while he himself fled on, drawing the hunters the Tyrants send after him away from the place where Mia now was. But even with that, she is still tied to Perdition. She can not escape it and while she has no idea of it, Perditions hunters might still find her, seeking to test her, drag her back and force them into Perditions designs. She might be tempted with power or corrupted since there is no telling what the Tyrants might have in store for her. And she is still connected to the place through her soul and that is a bond the Tyrants and their hunters can use to get to her.

The hunters eventually caught up with her father, but she remain hidden.
So Mia grew up within the spanish speaking community of workers in the mining hive. She got her education, did the odd jobs here and there, chased after money and eventually started to collect work experience. She was involved with some illegal activity, some anti-corporate groups and had her run-ins with the law. But the law in the hive is a thing in itself. The dwarven security force usually only troubles themselves with things that threatens the integrity of the whole operation and the rest is left to locally hired mercenaries and sometimes even gangs. So she usually managed to wiggle her way out of anything serious and learned quickly how to evade the worse situations. Developing both her work experience, skills in piloting machines and her general knowledge. 

And she quickly developed the dream of being a pilot and have her own ship. But the Tiphars was, in her opinion, already full. And she did not thought that hiring on with some military of mercenary force. That sort of life had way too many rules and she would not be allowed to fly as she liked. People called her “Tail” when she was a kid and she even decided, that once she has a ship, that will be her callsign as she remembers the few friends she had as a kid fondly and, even when it was not an easy life, she still thinks that it was good for the most part.

Following her dream, she left the hive when she was 18, having managed to get enough money saved up to pay for a flying license. Her quick mind and uncanny ability to understand anything that can be piloted helped her in blasting through the course and she soon started to fly shuttles between mining stations in order to earn money for the next part of her journey. Doing some smuggling along the way allowed her to get enough money, so that three years later, she managed to get away and out of the system.
She bounced around a few of the nearby systems searching for a place she would feel like she would belong to, doing mechanic and piloting jobs along the way. But never anything stable as she still looked for a place that would make her feel like she would be at home and have chances to grow.
It did not took too long however, at the age of 22, that she got spotted by a member of a ship crew who quickly managed to recruit her. Sadly, on the very first voyage, one of the officers on the ship got handsy and tried to get her into bed with him. She shot it down, but felt, that she would not be able to stay on that crew. So she left again and this time found a more promising opportunity. 

It might not have sounded fully legal, but it promised money and the idea to be a part of a crew. Something she wanted to become a part of as the small group on a ship was much more to her liking then the crowds of people that she lived between back where she came from. So she was not too picky, even after her first experience, and hired on … only to discover, that it was not a smugglers ship, but the pirate vessel known as “The Hangman”, run by the infamous Captain Francesca Diego and that the cargo the ship had loaded consisted of slaves.
Being who she is, she argued, that she has not signed up for that. But she could not leave any more and the pirates only laughed at her arguments, throwing her into a cell and telling her, that if she does not smarten up and join them, she would be sold together with the slaves once they arrive at the market.
The Hangman however never made it to its destination as it was ambushed by a Capy patrol ship that was out on piracy patrol. The pirates tried to flee and in the chaos of the fight and everyone busy with trying to make the engines go even faster, Mia managed to get out of the cell and she used her understanding of computers and machines to get through the ship and into the captains shuttle. 
She undocked it and fled, dodging the incoming fire. But she could not avoid it all and got hit several times, forcing her to divert to the next inhabited planet. Luckily, the patrol ship was busy with the pirates and their captain decided, that they would look for the shuttle later. They even put it off for now as they have noticed, that the pirate ship was shooting at it too.
But Mia had the problem, that she was in a shuttle that was loosing all power and was plunging down towards the surface of a planet that was coming closer with very high speed. In her paniced search for anything that would help her, she found the captains chest, that was hidden on the ship. And inside, aside of money, a gun, and a set of false identities the captain had set up for herself, she also found a nano-injector meant to inject her with a nanite factory and turn her into a nanocyte. An experimental device that was stolen from a corporate research laboratory and was worth more money then Mia has ever imagined she could have. But she could not sell it and did not even knew what it was. But the container had a label and it did said, that it can heal injuries and strengthen the body against attacks or other trauma. And with the shuttle still falling, she injected it.

At least, that is what she thinks as she has a memory gap between finding the chest and pulling the shuttle up to avoid diving nose down into the ground when she manages to restart the engines for a last boost before they would die for good.
She managed to land well enough to walk away from the crash with the things she looted from the captains chest and run away before anyone could come to check on the shuttle or the patrol ship would come back. As she thought, that the Capy would surely consider her part of the pirate crew. 

She managed to get to the next settlement and with the money she got, she booked a ticket out system and made a run for it. And eventually she spotted the information about the planet Gulion and decided to go there as it looked promising to maybe offer the chance for her to finally start the sort of life she always wanted.

Of course, the pirate captain escaped the Capys wrath and is just as much looking for Mia as is the corporation that originally created the nanite-injector.

The Abbyverse

Kategorie: Abbyverse

This is about the roleplaying world my friends and I play in. 

It's a collaboration of ideas. We use the Starfinder ruleset as basis, but it ended up as a Dungeons & Dragons in space. We took out the gamified leveling of Starfinder. 

The setup:
Human colonized space is an about 3000 light years in radius sphere. Ships can travel about 30 light years in a week. Faster scout and courier ships are faster and can sometimes go up to 60 to 90 light years in a week.
The ship leaves normal space by ripping a hole violently into the membrane between the Einstein-continuum and a parallel universe where the speed of light is massively different. A few moments, a few light months further the ship rematerializes in normal space through another membrane hole.
There are some reactors that pull energy from the same space. FTL communication is very expensive and energy intensive and can’t be provided in many places.

The campaign started in the city of Bhoover on the planet of the same name. About a third of the planetary population lives in the capital city. It's located at the equator for easier access to space. 
The planet itself has a really thick atmosphere. Link to the solar system

 The man who hired them, Charles Bouvier. He is an orc and one of the bosses of the company Neumann, Inoue & Bouvier Ltd. Co. The trio met Charles' in the Den's Den, the bar of a capyton businessman called Den, obviously and who apparently is friends with Charles. It's not clear what Charles' company includes. They do at least delivery and mission person cases. 
The first job for him was to find the driver who he lost contact with in the horrible storm that happened on the first day. The over 40°C dry air storm at the equator made life difficult for a while in Bhoover city. They found the vehicle, one of Charles' men died. Poor Martin Baumgartner. The trio went ahead and delivered a seemingly very important device to a company. 

In the bar they also met 'the Elf'
The guy, an elf of very undescribable age. He could be very well 25 or 50.
He is leather clad and seems comfortable. He sits there, one arm over the back of the bench he has seated himself and his drink in his left. His head shifts, looking directly towards Mia's table and finger guns at her with a wink. One of these really cheesy ones. Not a 'hey, I hit on you!' one, but calculated 'gotcha!'. But not unfriendly, as he smiles going back to his drink.
He gained a bit of notoriety of showing up while fingergunning in place the trio is investigating. Especially Mia really seems to get upset about him. 

The second job is to find Margarete Steel in New Texas. They spent some time studying the files on the train to Summer Springs. Later on that trip they met 'The Elf' again and then once again as they disembarked at their destination. He handed one of them a playing card for some reason. 

https://website.irkanien.de/images/pdf/bouviercasefile.pdf
https://website.irkanien.de/images/pdf/Incident001.pdf
https://website.irkanien.de/images/pdf/MPC001926.pdf

And then there is the second group, the JJ. Jucy and Jace jump into action when the fourth player isn't avaiable. The two were sent to a place by a moonwalking elf and a feline named Tila. To a bit of a surprise the scene looked oddly familiar, but there was no dead Martin anymore. Now they had a chance to figure out what really happened on that really hot day two days before. 

A picture of Tila to the right.

 

There are a ton of races, made up and premade fantasy races in the universe. One of the ones we really like are the Capyton. Uplifted Capybaras.

Capybaras
So, the Greys found out that humans very much like capybara's but slightly misunderstood that humans can find everything cute from babies, to cats to rocks. So they uplifted a pair of Capybara, calling them Adam and Eve, ironically. Their plan was to open capy-brothels, and did so. It did not go over super well, the indentured slaves artificially uplifted to a state just above intelligence rebelled. Their really peaceful nature finally broke. They made a lush forrest world their home calling it Capy-ton. 
Since the day of the rebellion every, literally every capyfolk is armed, usually to the teeth. They are still peaceful and good meaning, stoic in nature and center of the movement to abolish and free all slaves and indentured slaves around colonized space.

The names of capy-folk are a given name, a middle name representing the clan or order and a family name. 
As example Nixie Aligator-Rider Seaside

Order
Aligator-Rider - The conquest division of the Capy-ton military. The self given tasks of this order are counter-colonization, stoic-stalwart-defence, area-denial, pest-erradication (i.e. nanite swarms, feeding hordes), show of force, alliance related work. 
Jaguar-Befriender – The Intelligence service of Capy-ton. Tasks are intelligence, counter intelligence, general mayhem.